Author Archives: OctopusBi

It’s been a year of growth in challenging conditions.  Our personal and collective resilience as individuals, as teams, as communities, and as industries has been tested. Our reliance on technology has evolved our expectations of flexibility, work-life balance and social … Read More

I’ve had the privilege of speaking at two education technology (edtech) industry events in the last few weeks: the Holon IQ EdTech Top 50 announcement event and an EduGrowth webinar on Product Development for scaling EdTech. What struck me about … Read More

Gartner defines data-literacy as the ability to understand, share common knowledge of and have meaningful conversations about data, especially to drive better business outcomes. In the world of education, the prime goal of data literacy is to enable educators to … Read More

There’s a common expression both in startup circles and, increasingly, education: “building the plane as you fly”. The application in software-as-a service (SaaS) is obvious. You ship a minimum viable product (MVP) and enhance it and ship it again in … Read More

When I talk to customers and schools about their data projects lately, overwhelmingly they are interested in student welfare. Schools are becoming more aware of the opportunity to measure student welfare, particularly through self-reporting mechanisms, to help track and monitor … Read More

I was a Director of ICT for K-12 schools in my last role. For a decade, my job was to run the school’s IT without any faults. In that time, I grew close to many teachers and school leaders and … Read More

In 2020, educators reported a concerning drop in student empathy, physical activity and willingness to learn.  According to Amy Graham and Pasi Sahlberg in that report: ‘Australian educators send us a clear message in this study: classrooms have become emotionally, … Read More

As wonderful as they are, teachers aren’t genies or wizards. They can’t do everything.   Students only spend a certain amount of time inside a school within a teacher’s influence and guidance. Parents are the other half of the equation; the … Read More

Technology is a disruptor. I don’t mean that in what has become the typical interpretation, where technology helps institutions transform their education practice. It has done that, too. Technology has been great for new learning methods, and improved communication and … Read More

Thirteen years ago, the first iPhone was released and society as we knew it began to change. Bringing all forms of communication – calls, text, emails, facetime, and social networks – into one tool that could be used by an … Read More